by Paul Doiron
“It’s no big deal.”
“Sir Galahad,” said Tammi, and then she gave a throaty laugh, which made her sister smile with closed lips.
“I’ll be home in about an hour,” Jamie said. “Don’t let Lucas eat any more of my Caramel deLites. I found an empty box under his bed yesterday.”
“You know he doesn’t listen to me.”
“Just try to keep an eye on him if he sneaks into the kitchen.”
“Nice meeting you,” I said to Tammi Sewall.
“Be good, you two,” she called after us.
“Sorry about Tammi,” Jamie said as I followed her down the narrow walk.
“Do you my mind my asking what’s wrong with her?”
Her breath in the cold air reminded me of a dialogue balloon emerging from the mouth of a cartoon character. “Oh, God. Did she proposition you?”
“No.”
“Because she does that all the the time with guys. She was in a car accident a few years ago with my folks and had a head injury. They were bringing her home from a basketball game in Jonesport.” She touched the side of her head gently. “If you put your hands under her hair, you can feel the scar from the brain surgery. My beautiful little sister became a completely different person. Most days, I don’t even recognize her.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too, but the one you should blame was my dad, who shouldn’t have been behind the wheel.”
She fell silent, and I could tell that my question had shoved her back into the past, where she was reliving dark days again. I didn’t dare ask about her parents, although her tone suggested that they-her father at least-might have died in that same crash.
“What are Caramel deLites?” I had no idea why I asked this.
“Girl Scout cookies. The neighbor kid sold me like twenty bucks’ worth of them last month. It’s no wonder I didn’t get my butt back after Lucas was born. Working at McDonald’s doesn’t help.”
I found myself at a loss for words, but Jamie didn’t seem to notice. Sitting beside me in the truck, she fastened her seat belt and resumed her commentary. “I guess hospital visiting hours are until eight, so if we go fast, maybe I can see Prester. Would you mind stopping at the Rite Aid first? I need to pick up some Nicorette. I’m going through serious withdrawal. You don’t smoke, do you?”
“No.”
“You don’t look like a smoker.”
“How do I look?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a grin. “Clean.”
In spite of myself, I found myself glancing out of the corner of my eye at her reflection in the passenger window. She caught me looking and smiled.
“I’ve never sat in the front seat of a cop car until today. Does this qualify as a cop car?”
“Technically.”
“Prester practically lived in them,” she said. “I worry sometimes that Lucas is going to end up like him. When Prester was a little boy, he was so sweet and loving. That was before he started drinking. Once he got to high school, the cops started bringing him home on Saturday nights, or he would call from the jail, and I would have to go bail him out. Lucas is way smarter than Prester is-he’s a genius, I swear-but they have that same mischievous streak. That reminds me-did he leave his notebook in your truck?”
“Yeah, he did,” I said. “It’s back at my house.”
“He was going crazy trying to find it.”
“I’ll drop it off tomorrow.”
The suggestion made her smile, as if a second visit would not be unwelcome. She leaned forward and braced her arms against the dash. “There’s the Rite Aid.”
I parked under a bright klieg light, which made Jamie’s face look bloodless. A Ford Thunderbird with a mismatched driver’s door, blue against red, was parked in the adjacent spot. Two teenage boys looked over at my patrol truck and then slunk down in their seats.
“You need anything?” she asked.
“I’m good.”
The boys in the T-Bird watched Jamie go inside the store with wolfish grins, which vanished as soon they caught me glaring in their direction.
I sat there in the idling truck, trying to determine whether Jamie was interested me in particular or whether flirtatiousness was just her natural behavior. I’d been in such a hurry to see her again that I’d lost track of the line I’d set for myself, the one separating professional detachment from here-we-go-again impulsiveness. Without meaning to, I’d drifted into oncoming traffic and was headed for another of my usual collisions.
I glanced at the dashboard clock. We’d be cutting it close at the hospital if Jamie hoped to visit her brother. But I should have plenty of time to make my appointment with Zanadakis at ten.
After a few minutes, Jamie returned, scowling. “That woman is such a bitch. I’m in there all the time, and she still cards me.” She tore open the cellophane and used a nail to pierce the cardboard. She removed two pieces of nicotine gum and popped them into her mouth.
A hidden cell phone chirped from somewhere on her person. She dug into her pocket and looked at the luminous screen. “I need to take this,” she said.
“That’s fine.”
She swung the door open and stepped out again. I watched her stand, shivering, under the klieg light. She spoke with animation into the phone and then began to pace back and forth, ranging farther and farther away from the door. She leaned against a white box advertising crushed ice and stared at nothing in particular. Finally she flipped the lid of the phone down and climbed back into the warm truck.
“That was my ex,” she explained.
“Your ex?” I thought she meant Randall.
“My ex-husband. Lucas’s dad. Suddenly he’s available to drive me to Machias to pick up the van. That’s Mitch in a nutshell, Mr. Dependable.”
I didn’t know how to respond. I’d understood that Lucas’s father wasn’t Randall Cates, but it hadn’t occurred to me that another man might still be important in her life. Not that it should concern me.
“You must think I’m a piece of work,” she said.
“Kind of. Yes.”
“I suppose I am, but I’m trying to be a better person. I’m really, really, really trying. I’ve made so many mistakes in my life. This whole thing seems like my fault, like it’s a punishment for everything bad I ever did.” Immediately she started to shake and sob. “Poor Prester. I am so scared to see his face again.”
She put her head down and cried into her hands.
I sat quietly, afraid to touch her.
16
We arrived at the hospital ten minutes before the end of visiting hours, which meant that Jamie felt obliged to venture into the medical-surgery unit to look upon her brother’s ghoulish face, and because she was in such a state of wild grief, I felt obliged to join her. I thought that she might refuse my offer of help. Instead, she looked up at me and said, “Please,” and I realized I was deeper into dangerous territory than I’d previously understood.
We found a sheriff’s deputy sitting inside the door to Prester’s room, reading a dog-eared copy of American Snowmobiler he must have pilfered from the waiting room. He was a fresh-faced guy with the neat mustache some rookie cops grow after joining the fraternity, finely boned hands that would be useless breaking up a bar brawl, and an officious tone that started down around his larynx.
“No visitors,” he said, barring our way.
“This woman is his sister,” I explained.
“The sheriff doesn’t want him talking to anyone until we get a statement from him.”
“Has he been charged with anything?”
“No.”
“Then you can’t stop her from visiting his bedside.”
“Look, man, I’m just following orders.”
“Is he even conscious yet?” I asked.
“Every once and a while, he starts yammering, but then he passes out again.”
“I need to see him,” Jamie said. “Please.”
“What is it with this guy?” he said. �
�How many times do I have to tell people he can’t be disturbed?”
The deputy’s nameplate said DUNBAR.
“Jamie, can you just wait outside for a second?” I said.
She removed her ski jacket and folded it over her arm. Dunbar watched her hips jiggle as she paced across the room, past the nurse’s desk at the center, hugging herself tightly.
“Why don’t you let her look in on her brother for a few minutes?” I said to Dunbar. “If the guy’s asleep, there’s no harm in her holding his hand.”
He gnawed on the edge of his mustache. “Is she your girlfriend or something?”
“I just gave her a ride to the hospital.”
His eyes followed her ass closely. “She’s the one banging Randall Cates?”
In the interest of helping Jamie see her brother, I resisted the urge to smack him across the chops. “Not anymore.”
He rolled the magazine into a tight tube and thwacked it like a nightstick against his open palm a few times. “I need to be in the room.”
I motioned to Jamie.
Prester Sewall lay prone on the wheeled bed. Some time over the past hours, the doctor had wrapped white bandages around his face, so that only his closed eyes showed now. He looked small with the sheet pulled up to his narrow chest and his skinny arms extended at his sides. We could hear his labored breathing through the strips of gauze.
“Prester?” Jamie whispered, taking his hand.
His eyes snapped open, bloodred and filled with terror. “Jamie?”
“Oh shit, he’s awake,” said Dunbar.
“I’m so happy to see you,” she said, but her voice cracked.
“What have they done to me, Jamie?”
His sister started to sob and shudder. Reflexively I set my hand on her shoulder.
“You’re OK,” she said. “Prester, you’re OK.”
“I’m not OK! They’re going to cut off my fingers!”
“Prester…” Her folded coat slid off her arm onto the floor.
“They’re going to cut off my nose!”
“Prester…”
He tried to sit up but didn’t have the strength and dropped his head against the pillow. “They won’t show me my face. I keep asking for a mirror, but they won’t bring me one.” He waved his bandaged arms. “What do I look like, Jamie? I look like a freak, don’t I?”
She put a hand to her mouth to hide her sobs. “Maybe they can do plastic surgery. Doctors in France gave a woman a new face.”
“I don’t want a new face! I want my normal face. I’m never going to have sex again in my life!”
“The doctors can repair your face.” She looked at me with pleading eyes. “Can’t they, Mike?”
“Doctors can do some amazing things,” I replied, fully aware of the lameness of this as a response.
“Who’s he? What’s he doing here?” His crimson gaze turned on the deputy standing behind me. “Why are the cops here, Jamie?”
“This is my friend Mike. He’s the warden who found you. He said you and Randall got lost in the snow.”
Again the injured man tried sitting up, and again he flopped back against the pillow as if attached to it by a string. “Where’s Randall? Is he here in the hospital? Is his chest OK?”
“We’d better cut this off,” the deputy whispered in my ear.
Jamie dropped down to one knee and clutched at her brother’s freckled arm. “Randall’s dead, Prester.”
“Jamie,” I cautioned.
“He’s dead?”
“The cops won’t tell me what happened,” she said.
“OK, that’s enough.” Dunbar tapped his rolled magazine against his open hand. The gesture was meant to be intimidating but came across as comic-as if he was really going to club anyone into submission with an old issue of American Snowmobiler.
Prester’s voice rose to the level of a wail. “Randall’s dead?”
If Sewall really did kill his friend, I thought, he’s a terrific actor.
“Give me a fucking break,” Dunbar muttered.
Prester was breathing heavily through his bandages. His bloody eyes were locked on mine. “What happened to him? Did he freeze to death?”
The deputy had forgotten his own orders to prevent the injured man from having any conversations. “You know exactly what happened.”
“Leave him alone,” said Jamie. “My brother’s an injured person.”
“Your brother’s a murder suspect.”
“Dunbar,” I said, my voice heavy with warning.
Prester Sewall had begun to flail his arms and kick his legs. “The cops think I killed Randall?”
“Hey! Hey!” a woman said, stepping into the fray. She wore an unbuttoned sweater over surgical scrubs. She was as lean as a marathon runner and had short sandy hair and a voice like an army bugle. “What’s going on here?”
“I’m sorry, Doctor,” I said.
“I’m not a doctor. I’m the charge nurse.”
“This is Mr. Sewall’s sister,” I explained.
“I don’t care who she is. This man is in serious condition. He’s recovering from hypothermia, and he’s detoxing off alcohol and opiates. Are you officers trying to give him a heart attack?”
“Everything is under control,” Dunbar said.
“The hell it is.” She thrust her finger in the direction of the nearest door. “I want you out of here right now.”
Prester seemed to be hyperventilating. “The cops think I killed Randall, Jamie.”
“No, they don’t,” she said. “It’s got to be some kind of mistake. Isn’t it, Mike?”
My silence must not have reassured her because a look came into her widening eyes, as if she’d just guessed the answer to a riddle.
“You all need to leave this instant,” said the nurse.
“You heard the nurse,” said Dunbar in his “Move along” voice.
“Including you, Deputy,” said the nurse.
“I want to wake up now,” Prester sobbed. “I’m having a nightmare!”
Jamie grabbed her coat from the floor and said, “I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll bring Tammi and Lucas.”
“I want to wake up,” wailed the injured man.
“If you don’t all leave this instant, I’m calling the sheriff,” said the nurse.
“We’re leaving,” I said.
The nurse yanked the drapes shut across the glass windows; it was like a curtain closing at the end of a play.
“You need to calm down, Mr. Sewall,” I heard her say. “Take deep breaths.”
Jamie stormed down the hall to the admittance desk as if she’d forgotten I was in her company.
I glared one last time at Deputy Dunbar, who looked like a kid who’d just broken a window with a baseball, and followed her out into the stark light of the parking lot.
By the time I caught up with her, she’d beeped open the van and was rummaging around the passenger side for something.
“Jamie?”
She spun around with an ice scraper in her hand and went to work on the layer of frost that had built up across the windshield. Her motions were quick, compact, and violent.
“So when were you planning to tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
She stopped scraping but kept her back to me. “The cops think my brother killed Randall.”
“I’m not part of the investigation,” I explained.
Jamie turned around. In the cold light of the parking lot, I became aware of the bones beneath her skin. I could easily imagine the shape of her skull. “What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t know what theories the state police are pursuing.”
“Prester wouldn’t hurt anyone,” she said.
“Not even if he was provoked?”
The question seemed to catch her off balance, because she took her time answering. “My brother loved Randall. Don’t ask me why.”
“And you have no idea what they were doing in the Heath?”
“You asked
me that before.”
“Look, I know this has been a horrible shock.” I dug my bare hands into my parka pockets. “But if you want to help your brother, you need to tell me what you know.”
“You just said you weren’t part of the investigation.”
“I’m not, but maybe I can help you.”
She let out a sharp laugh. “Because you care so much for my well-being.”
“I know we just met,” I said. “But I understand what you’re going through.”
“Oh, you do, do you?”
It was a good question. “Let me buy you a cup of coffee, and I’ll try to explain.”
“I thought you were different,” she said.
“I am different.”
“No, you’re not. You’re just a guy with a stiff dick like all the rest.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but really, what was there to say?
17
After Jamie screamed off into the night, I decided to grab a late, lonely dinner and reflect on the absurdity of my day.
I made a circuit of the mom-and-pop restaurants that constituted the Machias dining scene and found that all of them had ceased serving for the night. Eventually I put aside my scruples and returned to the McDonald’s on Route 1.
I paused in front of Jamie’s portrait on the wall and felt my pulse speed up. Her golden brown eyes looked so clear in the photograph, and her smile seemed so genuine, as if being named Employee of the Month were truly an honor. And maybe it was an honor after all she’d been through: a busted marriage, the death of her parents, caring for a brain-damaged sister, an alcoholic brother, and a weird little boy. I remembered her sobriety chip and her breakdown in my truck, when she’d blamed her past behavior for the calamities that had befallen Prester.
She’d accused me of being no different from all the leering men she met at the restaurant, as if somehow my desire to save her was just a deluded manifestation of lust. Looking at her portrait again, feeling the effect her smile had on my heart and groin, I found I couldn’t totally deny the accusation.